Where did I begin?
by Snowingroses
Summary: Where did I begin? A question that must be present on at least five differents lips. How where they chosen? Why were they chosen. When were they really chosen? please consider R&R.
1. Chapter 1

The continent was Africa; the country was Egypt, the time some decade and a half earlier. The home was of Ambassador Iah.

She woke with a start. Her entire body ached, her head was pounding and she couldn't control the retching pains of her stomach. She was sick, really bad sick. It hit her no sooner than she sat up. The urge to purge her stomach of any remaining contents she hadn't lost the night before.

It hit her esophagus like a hot fire roaring up. She tried to get up. She didn't make it but there was a pan beside her bed.

Her next ripple of purging hit the wastebasket.

She laid back her sides heaving slight tears trickling down the corners of her eyes. She had nothing left to cry out; all she wanted right now was to die. Then it struck her, the victims. The victims she thought as her fist clenched around the spread and sheets. The second wave of nausea hit her. It didn't let her down. It was even more painful than the first.

She sobbed, wanting nothing more than to make the pain go way to stop the vomiting. She wanted to be held; she figured if this was the way she was going to die vomiting. She at least wanted to be held in someone's arms. To feel that calm reassuring touch as someone stroked her cheeks. To be soothed and called a little princess.

The wave hit her a third time without warning. She couldn't even make it to sit up. She was going to die, by her bodies own cruel vial fluids. Her world faded into a burst of burning white light.

The gunmetal gray med-a-vac helicopter flew in tight formation with four other identical helicopters bringing relief to what was left of a once bustling state. In each one a doctor was position in back and awaiting touchdown in the respective areas they would be working in.

A cocky young camouflaged sergeant looked out the nearest open port. His black polished sun glasses mirrored a rippling scene of the streets below. Dead lay upon the dead, in the streets.

He pointed out at the vista, yelling over the whup – whup of the blades beating above them. "Sad, man. Look at 'em. Their all so gone."

A young doctor inched nearer the sergeant. He peered out unprepared for the sight that greeted him. His stomach knotted. He had to remind himself, this is what he signed on for. This was war, even it if was against an unseen enemy.

"Well Doc' whatcha think killed them, eh?" The Sergeant inquired as the lit up a cigar that smelled suspiciously like apples.

Young doctor Anderson absented mindedly waved the sickening smoke from his air space, as he settled back against his wall. He didn't immediately respond. Instead he took up his black medical case.

"Well?" The sergeant inquired again, though it seemed more like needling now.

"Parasites, disease, plagues, maybe a new string of virus." He looked at the cocky sergeant now, his own black sunglasses concealing his eyes, but reflecting their surroundings.

"Palace ETA, two minutes." A raspy voice echoed over their head sets.

"Lieutenant Barnard, have you made contact yet?" Dr.Anderson replied, as his fingers laced through the handles of his medical bag.

"Not, yet Doctor, but the landing pad is in sight and it doesn't look good."

Nothing could have of prepared Doctor Anderson for the sight that greeted him and the Sergeant.

After passing three alcoves, several doors, and more dead than he cared to continue counting Anderson looked at his armed escort.

"Well it's quite apparent everyone is dead here. But they weren't murdered in some revolt. At least not one you can use your weapon on."

The sergeant turning out to a jumpy person jerked his gun at even the slightest breeze. "What about our ambassador?"

"Well." Anderson paused beside a withering corpse. "Here's our ambassador. And I believe that's his wife, there."

The sergeant cast a disdainful eye on the corpses. So he didn't see the bony woman when she staggered into him, and grasp his lapel. He had no time to react, fear had cast him frozen. She was muttering something. A pray or curse to ward off the besieging the evil. She made a sign, rubbing at a talisman. "The Princess is ill. Princess is dying. Please the Princess is dying."

She died her fingers still intertwined into the terrified sergeant's flight jacket. Her dying words lingering heavily in the air between the two men.

That day as the med-a-vac helicopter took off from the helipad of Ambassador Iah home, it left with the only surviving member of a once prominent blood line. If the ivory skinned girl survived the brutal attack of the ravenous virus perhaps she would survive, recruitment. After all that was what this was wasn't? The ground work for a futuristic team, but who or what was next?


	2. Chapter 2

"Waves in shades of blue and greens came crashing up along the glistening white sandy beach. Just out of high tides grasping fingers sat the Shore Front Café. Where my targets sat lounging, soaking up the sun filled afternoon. I wonder now? If they had known, no did they know? That today was the last day they would be alive? Is this how they had truly chosen to go? Or had they indeed been waiting on someone."

The Devil Star, the elite feminine Spectra destroyer, paused turning a mask over and over in her hand. Her looked betrayed her, the glassily black eyes; they captivated and haunted their prey.

"She is coming. If not today, then tomorrow or the next but she is coming. I see the haunting black eyes behind the marble white face. She stalks my dreams." Jason's mother peered outward toward the boy.

His father placed a hand atop hers. He gave her a firm squeeze. "He is there, he is well. See my love." His thick Sicilian accent purred from barely moving lips. "We will escape this triviality war. You will see and our son only now a lad will grow to be a man to make us both proud. And with the documentation, to destroy our overlord, we'll finally be free."

The pale moon washed death mask slid into place. Its owner rolled her head from left shoulder to the right and again to the left. It could be said she thought the mask fit like a glove. Only instead of shielding the hand, it was her face it guarded. She blinked her eyes to accustom her vision.

She slid the top off a squat dusty silver tone cylinder, turning the base. A bullet shaped red stick slid upward. Again she tilted her head from the left shoulder to the right and back to the left. She looked at the lipstick as if it were the very first time she had ever seen anything so delicate. With the first stroke a deep scarlet color flooded across pale lips replacing natural shades with the color of freshly spilled blood. There was no turning back this time. She had applied her lipstick. This time her mistress, her mentor, her teacher had to die. It was no longer a game of cat and mouse. She had been ordered, to destroy the creator of the Devil Star Squadron. She was leaving, abandoning them, and no one abandoned or left the organization alive.

The boat their only way out had never left the harbor. Its owner lay somewhere in the muck of dirty water, his form was lashed to the anchor. By now he was dead; in all probability he had drown, a slow wretched lulling death that no one would have heard even if he had screamed.

His last thoughts rang in his head as pressure built. It was Anderson's voice he heard. "Remember these people have something they want to barter with. They want freedom and our

government wants information."

"And they have it." He finished up.

Haidée stood looking toward to the piers. She ran her fingers down the front of her skirt smoothing out invisible wrinkles. "Where is he? He should be here. What if this Anderson has back out? What if his government has changed their mind?" Her accent came out thicker now as fear began lacing its way into her thoughts.

Achille let his own hand wonder to the position of the concealed Sig Sauer. He studied his wife's form. She had reclaimed the smooth voluptuous Devil Star form even after having given birth to such hefty baby boy some few years ago. A rarity indeed, she had even continued on for a while working as one of the masters elite. She to had grown tired of all the killings, the destructions, but perhaps what had bothered her most was the realization she was orphaning not only her son every time she went out, but also children of whoever she was sent to dispatch. She had even swayed Achille into feeling much the same way.

The Devil Star was sure the sisterhood had taken care of the any possible escape route the family had plotted. Though a seaside city with many visitors, the citizens always knew who was there for what. It had been three weeks ago a new visitor showed up planting himself in the mist of the city as one of its own citizens. He offered boat trips. But like many of the visiting men to the wonderful seaside city, he was captivated by the women and drink. It was this very desire or need for the unattainable that had sealed his fate.

"I wonder about her the mentor she once was; now she has become soft and weak after the birth of her son. Has she lost the ability to move with poise, ease, stealth? Or is it because she has gotten older, or has my dearest sweet handsome baby brother destroyed her resolve."

Thicker frothy waves of blue-green rolled up washing with it starfish, puddles of jellyfish, shells and a few other aquatic animals to which Jason was unable to identify. The unidentifiably creatures, drew Jason's attention to the outer edges of the water.

A scarlet floral pattern blossomed across Achille's chest, followed by the guns slower report of the first shot as the second shot was fired. Again the report was slower than its bullet. Another splash of color floated over his crisp white shirt. Flecks of blood and bodily matter from his lungs stuck to Haidée's pale blouse top.

Time slowed and then stopped as things began to play out as a slide show. The gun swung around. It came up. A look of horror washed over Haidée's face. A blossoming scarlet flower bloomed across her small frame. Her expression slipped to remorse. And then she was gone.

Time seem to suddenly slip back to normal speed as the roles reversed with a small boy swinging the blood stained Sig Sauer up, a burst of blue – white flame belched from the tip of the cold steel barrel. She moved swiftly plucking a single red rose from her lapel and tossing it at the fanatic boy. Both reports were muffled by the sonic rumble of a jet passing over.

The floral bomb devoured the forms of his parents, any information they had been carrying and the identity of the young boy as its heat and blast flung him backward into the gathering hungry waters.

The pilot a man with his own family safely hidden away in civilian life, was unable to do everything that needed to be done. He had landed but the damage had already been done. The boy's family was dead, the woman or whoever had escaped and the boy if he was to live, was in desperate need of medical attention and he could only think of one place to go.

Days later found the kind pilot and Anderson seated about a deserted kitchen table discussing the outcome and future of the wounded boy.

"You realize he is the child of assassins? Both of them were trained to be deadly." Anderson spoke to his companion, but he gaze fell on the golden daggers of flame licking up in the fireplace.

He shrugged. "Weren't they defecting? Didn't you tell me, my sergeant was to retrieve them? They had information to help in our war against the oppressor."

Anderson nodded. "Apparently, your sergeant didn't make it? And it appears the papers were lost with the boys parents."

"Yes, my sergeant was found. Murdered or drown? How ever you wish to view it. What of the boy Anderson, will he recover?"

Chief Anderson paused to look at his friend. "He'll recover, though it will take a few more surgeries to fully restore his facial features. He'll always seem to have a harden appearance about him or a chiseled look. Why do you believe your man was murdered?"

He shrugged shifting again in his chair, listening for a moment before he began again. "Where would you like for me to begin? The lashing marks about his wrists, water in his lungs or the lipstick smudges where the flesh didn't burn away?"

"They burnt his body?" Anderson ask incredulously.

"The burning boat was found three days after the attack. She, he or whoever it was probably used it as an escape."

"Why?" Anderson began and then lost his thought.

"Why drown him? Then take his body and burn it, abroad the boat? Do you want to know what I think? Or what the agency thinks?"

Anderson glared at him.

"Papa." A blurry eyed tousled haired young boy wondered in and staggered into his fathers waiting arms. "I've missed you papa." He yawned.

"You remember Chief Anderson."

Mark gave a sleepy wave as he nestled against his father's chest.

"In answer to your question, I think they were trying to cover up something."

He stood to go put his son back to bed.

"You realize there isn't much difference if any in their age?" Anderson ask, picking up the child's

toy airplane from the table.

His response was however. "How's your green – eyed porcelain Swan Princess?"

Anderson chuckled. "Oh she's enthralled with a daring young pilot, with silver eagle wings."

"Funny you should mention she's enthralled. I think that same pilot is her biggest fan."


	3. Chapter 3

**Warning:** This maybe a deeply troubling fic for some. It deals with death, and I have taken it to a some what dark level. I've not really iced the cake, so be advised.

* * *

_I watched as the last fragments of light where devoured by the darkening skies. There were neither songbirds singing nor were there any other nocturnal creatures making a sound. I wish I could say I can't recall the last time I felt this sad, or even say I have ever felt this sad. But both those statements are lies._

Marks' thoughts

The evening sky set a blaze with the red and blue lights, no sound emitted but from the tires crushing gravel. The ambulance crew slid from behind the sleek techno fitted dash, and steering wheel. Set about their work silently. The double doors swung open, without as much as a sound. A tidy gurney birthed from the back. The white body of the gurney bedding stood like an ocean with a folded shroud a center of it like a single boat.

At least that was how the image burned into Mark's young mind. Its silver chrome polished frame winked at the boy as the attendants wheeled it into the home he shared with his widowed mother.

His head sunk low, his chin resting against his black tee shirt. He thrust his small hands into the pockets of his cargo jeans. The cool fall air seemed to have no effect on the young boy. But discovering death, somehow always manage to leave you that way.

Anderson offered Mark one of the children's jackets, taken from his car, but he refused shaking his head no. Anderson offered him solemn comfort but he would have none of it.

Anderson tried desperately to recall if Mark had been this contrary when his father's test plane had blown up over the ocean. He paused to recall then Mark's mother had been there with Mark. One of the few times she had ever came out, to witness her husband's work.

Cronus hadn't been happy that she was there, he was equally disturbed that his son would witness this plotted death. He had almost called it off, and probably would have, had he known almost.. no four months and four days later. His wife would suddenly die of a heart attack.

She'd been sick, Anderson knew that. She'd encouraged Mark to go spend a few nights with the other children in Anderson's care. But Anderson hadn't realized when Mark had not been able to reach her, that he would come home to find her dead. Anderson cursed himself for letting Mark come over with him. He knew the boy was using some lame excuse to pick up the last toy plane his father had bought him. He didn't go anywhere without that. He was certain he had it only the night before as he, Jason, Princess and Tiny huddled around the fireplace telling each other scary stories.

But he supposed what he really cursed himself for was letting Mark jump out and run ahead to his house.

He'd discovered her, asleep he thought.

"Momma?"

He'd crawled up on to the bed.

The air conditioning was running. But hadn't it been a bit cool for that? She had no lights on, save for what the television cast out across the room.

She was on her side, her hands gathered up to her, like she was in prayer.

He touched her.

Suddenly his world went spinning out of control, his actions became a blur.

He remembered his back pressed against the door, he had shut it.

He never recalled hearing the clicking of the lock as he turned it, there by locking himself in the room with his dead mother.

He lost his voice.

He forgot what he was supposed to do.

He turned unlocking and opening the door.

"She's dead." He had spoken it.

Suddenly it became really real to him. No amount of locking himself in or locking the world out was going to undo that.

Anderson jaw dropped as he pushed past the boy. He examined her finger nails. "Turning black," he noted. "Rigor mortis had already settled in, I believe she may have had a Cadaveric spasm. She's been death I would say, 12 to 18 hours."

He'd forgotten he'd slipped into his medical professional. He was distance, suddenly clinical.

He fell silent as he watched Mark still in the throws of shock making the 911 call. "My momma's dead." He spoke with cold icy authority.

"How do you know this son, is there anyone else there with you right now?"

How dare they ask a little boy how does he know his mothers dead? Anderson thought as he rounded the bed to take the phone. A second phone rang. Mark instinctively answered it as well as holding to the other with the 911 operator on the other end.

"Hello?"

"No son, do not answer that. Listen I need you to say on the line with me. Let the phone ring."

"But I have to answer it." He whined. He was about to break down. He was losing his resolve.

"How do you know she is dead?" the operator ask yet again before Anderson could reach him. It suddenly seemed things had gone to slow motion.

"Because she's cold, and not moving and Dr.Anderson said she's got rigor tor- no mor- us, her finger nails are black, and she had a car-dvery-ic spasm."

Mark suddenly remembered to click the other phone off but it was too late, the person on the other end had already heard him.

Anderson swooped in taking both phones from Marks hands. He finished the 911 call, and returned the other call while they awaited the arrival of the medical examiner.

"It's a heart attack." The coroner, a tall beefy man with thinning hair told Anderson, as Mark stood looking on.

Some of Marks mothers' family had gathered, a brother and three sisters. "If there is any of the family that would like to see her, before we move her. Now's the time."

Mark jumped on the chance, sweeping past them all. He muttered more to himself Anderson supposed than to anyone. "I wished you'd just left her the way she was."

And upon viewing the scene again, he understood why Mark was so distraught. They had moved her, in their inspections.

And now suddenly Mark saw her distorted twisted facial features for what they were. She had died in pain or of pain. The sheets were twisted up, knotted in her fists. Bile still clung to her painfully contorted lips. Her hair locks of wavy mahogany, matted. Her pale white gown bled into her ashen skin.

His fingers brushed over her cheeks.

'She's so cold." He whispered.

He looked about the room never touching anything never moving anything. She had been violated; these people come in here, looking into her stuff, touching her things. Stepping over her under garments where they still lay shed off. Didn't they have any dignity? He looked about the room, snatching up his mother's personal effects and depositing them in the hamper. Did no one care? Had no one cared? The injustice he felt was so over whelming.

Standing attention outside Mark watched as they wheeled the gurney past him. An Emerald green shroud concealed her. Out of respect most people avert their eyes, dropping their heads, in the prospect of finding something more interesting to look at besides the dead being wheeled out past, but not Mark.

His fingers reached out; touching the soothing velvety shroud covering his mothers pain racked form. The feeling stayed with him as her form glided on away from under his touch. He stood as witness to her being loaded. He even recalled the halos of smoke rising from attendants, breath as they shut first one door and then the other. His senses captured even the dull thudding of the doors, the clicking of the lock.

The smell of the emissions released into the air as the vehicle cranked.

He watched the headlights burn a pathway out through the blackness. And then they were gone with her. He bowed his head, as the first drops of rain began to fall.

_"Angel's tears sent down to help wash the pain away."_ Princess had told him three days later at the funeral.

_ende_


End file.
